The QC Times masthead editorial of January 26th admonishes participants in Iowa’s distinctive caucus-to-convention system to Cut party platforms down to size. Apparently the luminaries on the QC Times Editorial Board believe that caucus participants who are concerned about specific issues are rubes and out of their league. Indeed according to them “Platforms are dumping grounds for wish lists.” By implication, convention delegates who go through the entire process are really pathetic. Legislators and smart people stay home caucus night and get their political opinions from the studied offerings in the QC Times on matters it decides are important.
Referring to the size of both the Democrat and Iowa Republican state platforms as around 400 planks each, the QC Times infers that no one could possibly have an instinct, much less a considered opinion, on so many planks . . . except the editorial Board of the QC Times of course. Now keep in mind that those same luminaries pretend to enlighten their readers with at least an editorial a day.
So a regular dump or more a day from the QCT, nuances intended, results in around 400 or so “planks” each year on any number of issues . . . enjoining, cajoling, indeed specifying. But political party delegates are just too stupid to form an opinion and lend support to a variety of matters that have risen to a level of prominence, and set them out with a modicum of specificity.
What the QCT also fails to acknowledge in their very superficial understanding of the process is that normally, relatively few new planks are added each year. Still current items of widespread concern are generally left alone and only items of new or ongoing controversy and significant changes are typically raised at conventions.
Platform committees and conventions do not generally rewrite or reinvent the hub of the party every two years. There is great stability. Items are eliminated as they become irrelvant. Certainly the process can be streamlined, but it will never be for the impatient, the unconcerned, or editorialists who prefer that politicians only listen to their erudition.
If issue discussion and resolution, a.k.a. platform development, were to be eliminated as a motivating force from the caucus structure and agenda, candidates would be less inclined to talk substantively on issues and they would be less prepared in their political outreach. The public would be subjected to even more emphasis on blandishments rather than cogent positions honed from dealing at the retail level with issue oriented people, the kind who are most inclined to show up at the caucuses. The caucus system helps breed capable effective activists and candidates.
While the QCT editorial board, out of hubris, might prefer to be the definer of issues for all parties, they are apparently too dumb to realize that losing a key formative component of Iowa’s caucuses would largely obviate the need for the system and Iowa’s special place in the current national mix. Iowa would quickly lose its political cache.
With that gone, somehow we think the QC Times and other newspapers in the state would be thought of as less influential, not more so, as Iowa becomes just another part of flyover country. We would rather keep Iowa’s special caucus system intact, and resultant influence, even if it means putting up with the extra, otherwise unearned, credence given to Iowa’s liberal newspaper establishment.
Platform development is an important grassroots component of the caucus evening. It is part of the most authentic grassroots empowering political process in practice in the country. The precinct caucus system and its components should be expanded to other states, not denigrated in our own.
The QC Times editorial wrote of platforms serving as guides but was bent on taking away any substance to that guidance. Vague guidance is no guidance on issues of immediate concern. Vagueness provides no prioritization. Instead such platforms take grassroots activists out of the prioritization process. But once parties allow for grassroots input and prioritization, what you have is, perish the thought, something that resembles an issue oriented platform. And that is a good thing.
The QC Times editorial listed and sought to ridicule some planks including identifying them as inconsistent in some way (as if their opinions are not subject to criticism). Of course they set them out, without context, but worse yet, they sought also to vilify and mischaracterize. The editorialists at the Davenport newspaper think current caucus platform participation is for cranks, rubes or evil doers . . . albeit with a few sensible people who they deign to highlight in the article.
According to such philosophical bed fellows, political parties are not for people to get together for the promulgation of matters of concern, they are for promoting vague politicians with an R or a D by their name. It would be like the Republican Party forming itself as the “Party of Freedom” and not mention slavery and providing indifferent support to any “R” no matter what a politicians views were or how they might undermine key priorities. Of course what would make the QC Times happy would be to turn the caucuses into a quaint little get together to discuss how to apply the QC Times views and priorities as set forth in their editorials. No thanks.
The QC Times article favorably featured a proposal sent forth from a Scott County Republican precinct caucus calling on the Party to limit the platform to “10 -15 overarching principles.” We are wondering if the proponents of such a plank have had the patience to read the preamble of the current District and State platforms where their concerns are addressed. Of course they are entitled to disagree, but if they have not done so, we would hope that they would consider reading those preambles, where they will see that basic principles are covered, and “guidance” on how to interpret the platform.
Or maybe the gambit to reduce the platform to a few platitudes is an effort to strike substance in general, (and reduce clear accountability from elected Republicans), preferring that to the inclusion of items they personally vehemently disagree with. As in throw the baby out with the bathwater. We will deal more with the ill considered implications of such a proposal (something similar has been proposed periodically for years) in our next related installment.
For the record, there was not one of the Republican planks that the QC Times selected for their snide treatment that we would not be happy to defend in context. Also please be aware that we will post this and future commentaries dealing with platform justifications and structure in a page set up for that purpose. Click on Platform in the page line above. Matters related to specific planks and platforms can be found in the category at right, 2014 Caucus & Conventions. R Mall
I agree with the Times in principle that the Platform is way too long, having helped write it for a few years. Yes it is a dumping ground of wishes, many of them violations of limited government principles that we so eloquently state in our preamble. Both parties are guilty of using the color of noble purpose to push their own profiteering agenda.
For Republicans examples are their devotion to tax and spend farm subsidies that overwhelmingly benefit those who are working the system to make a fortune rather than working their fields (I come from a farm family that has never used farm subsidies). As a veteran, I also agree with General Smedley Butler, President General Eisenhower, and General Clark and a long list of other senior ranking officers and enlisted who have found that our Military industrial complex doesn’t make us safer and costs way more than it should. The Republicans also have their own social engineering schemes, tax deductions for mortgage debt (enriching bankers), deductions for various causes they believe in. The purpose of government is Defense and Justice, not adventurism, not wealth creation, or even protecting the wealth of “producers” at the expense of “labor” (special capital gains income tax rates). Republicans are every bit a part of our Byzantine Labyrinth of tax law, currently at about 70,000 pages. The Government should should tax equally and fairly possibly with no deductions at all so that rates can be that much lower, and to allow everyone a paying stake in these important functions.
Republicans are for balanced budgets unless they’re in charge, look where that got us last time. When they are out of power Republicans are only looking to get back in power. I believe Democrats are more dangerous, but they are at least honest, they are there to advance an agenda, even if they loose a few elections.
That said, I believe the QC Times should stick to writing about the news instead of trying to create it.
Extremism in defense of truth is no vice. Barry Goldwater